Monday, Mar. 26. Party for Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Church St. Home of Celeste and Charles Patrick.            

The young members of the 1927 theatre company had been remiss about checking in with their families while on tour (came here from Korea, next show is Singapore), but fortunately someone back in London found news of them online.

 “My dad actually read in some blog that we’d spent our day off drinking,” said filmmaker Paul Barritt. “So he knew I was doing what I normally do and must be fine.”

Spoleto Party Blog, keeping families together.

Jan McNabb, who looks like a prettier Paula Deen, brought Barritt, 34, a crepe filled with strawberries flambéed in grand-marnier. He was swelteringly dapper in a tweed suit and felt fedora. Star/costumer Esme Appleton, 28, was in a tea-length silk black dress by London designer Matthew Williamson. 

“It has a bit of sexy split up the side, though,” she says, “so I have to wear a skirt underneath.” 

(The slit went all the way up to her knee. Totally slutty, if this were 1927.)

The cast was quite peeved that a local reviewer had spilled the beans on the show’s surprise.

“Yeah, a bloke did that in London too,” said Esme.

I managed not to mention the beans in my review (A+, easily my highest ever), but… SPOILER ALERT, SKIP DOWN TO THE NEXT CAPITAL LETTERS IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE SHOW…I asked Esme what she and Suzanne Andrade say to the “grandmama” they pull out of the audience and take behind the screen.

“We don’t speak to him. We just sit down at the same time and then we both take a sip of water at the same time. It’s kind of a coincidence. But I guess it’s planned.”

“So you mean you continue to creep this person out for your own benefit?”

(Shrug.)

OKAY YOU’RE SAFE.

…Speaking of news from children abroad, Celeste Patrick said her “second daughter” (and fellow society writer) Ida Becker, currently on a world tour/sabbatical, had suffered a concussion in a motorbike accident in South Africa but was recovering in Italy.

Take care Ida, we still love you, even if you did buy an Amazon Kindle.

Speaking of books (real ones), Barritt bragged of his recent finds at the Blue Bike, “Joseph Conrad, a brilliant old Christian pamphlet called Insanity of the Soul, and Sing Along with Mitch.”

Spoleto’s Scott Sowell and Jeffery Rhodes were talking about the hot experimental nonfiction genre (films like Supersize Me, Adam Shepard’s book about rising from faux-homelessness in Charleston, Scratch Beginnings.) I told them about a new one, 365 Nights by a Charlotte woman who gave her husband a very special 40th birthday present: daily sex for a year.

Saw Eliza Ingle, Charles Duell, Belinda Cole. This was great mingling if you want to start a capital campaign. Charming partygoers John and Norma Palms spearheaded the one to rehabilitate Memminger Auditorium.

There was an infusion of young blood at the end, including artist Jill Hooper.

Someone’s going to hurt themselves trying to pole-vault over the ever-rising Spoleto party bar. Two projections of old Mitchell & Kenyon film reels. Gingerbread cookies were a reference to the show’s “Biscuit Tin Revolution.” The signature drink was the Deep Blue Sea-tini: curacao, vodka and, pineapple with Devil-red cherries. Tasted like high school.

The Patricks’ own the 440-456 chunk of King Street, which means American Theatre, Fish Restaurant and the Aiken House, so, yeah, they had a caterer lined up.

The 1927 company members were introduced to Southern traditions like seersucker, BLTs, Chorizo mac-n-cheese balls, and sambuca mussels.

And you know it’s a Patrick Properties party when you see Their Favorite Off-duty Cop, short gray hair, dark suit, easily recognizable from standing guard at the Aiken House gate on King Street during weekend weddings. I don’t know his name but I know he takes a lot of pride in the resurgence of Upper King. I’ve also never seen him give so much as a stern glance but he looks capable of taking down a heckler coming out of O’Malley’s Happy Hour faster than you can say “vertical funeral.”

Cheeses: 0   

Laurie Anderson mentions: 0

Comments on my lack of dreadlocks: 5

Best such comment: “You look very clean,” Curtis Worthington, standing with my first boss in Charleston, the P&C’s Larry Tarleton and his wife Judy.